Arthur Cheney Train

The author, a former district attorney in New York County, provides a glimpse of how criminal cases are prepared, the motives of criminals, and the methods of detectives. He then uses the Camorra trial in Italy to draw comparisons between the Italian and American judicial systems.

"This is the first full account of the lost gospel of Jesus' original followers, revealing him to be a Jewish Socrates who was mythologized into the New Testament Christ. Compiled by his followers during his lifetime, the Book of Q (from Quelle, German for source) became the prime foundation for the New Testament gospels. Once lost, it has been reconstructed through a century of scholarship. In presenting his own translation, Burton Mack explains how the text of Q was determined and explores the implications of the discovery that Jesus was transformed into the dying and rising messianic savior of Christianity by the New Testament gospels." "Instead of telling a dramatic story about Jesus' life as the Christian gospels do, the Book of Q contained only his sayings. The first followers of Jesus focused not upon his life and destiny, but on the social experiment called for by his teachings. Their book collected his proverbs, aphorisms, and parables to offer instruction in living authentically in the midst of a most confusing time." "In The Lost Gospel, Burton Mack puts forth the first popular translation of Q as scholarly consensus has reconstructed it; shows that Jesus' life story as presented in the New Testament gospels was fictionalized for theological purposes; reveals Jesus to be a countercultural teacher and leader - subsequently mythologized into the Christ of the New Testament; depicts Jesus' followers not as Christians, but as disciples of a wise, antiestablishment teacher; they did not believe him to be the son of God, believe that he rose from the dead, or gather to worship in his name and concludes that Christianity is a mythologized religion (like Buddhism and other religions) rooted in a historical figure and teachings that in reality are quite remote from conventional beliefs."--Jacket.

From the book:It was three minutes past three postmeridian in the operating room of the new Wireless Station recently installed at the United States Naval Observatory at Georgetown. Bill Hood, the afternoon operator, was sitting in his shirt sleeves with his receivers at his ears, smoking a corncob pipe and awaiting a call from the flagship Lincoln of the North Atlantic Patrol with which, somewhere just off Hatteras, he had been in commu-nication a few moments before. The air was quiet. Hood was a fat man, and so of course good-natured; but he was serious about his work and hated all interfering amateurs. Of late these wireless pests had become particularly obnoxious, as practically everything was sent out in code and they had nothing with which to occupy themselves. But it was a hot day and none of them seemed to be at work. On one side of his desk a tall thermometer indicated that the temperature of the room was 91 degrees Fahrenheit; on the other a big clock, connected with some extraneous mechanism by a complicated system of brass rods and wires, ticked off the minutes and seconds with a peculiar metallic self-consciousness, as if aware of its own importance in being the official timepiece, as far as there was an official timepiece, for the entire United States of America. Hood from time to time tested his converters and detector, and then resumed his non-official study of the adventures of a great detective who pursued the baffling criminal by the aid of all the latest scientific discoveries.

Young lawyer tries to break down the Boss Tweed ring.